James Clayton Reed

Son of a traveling Methodist preacher, he entered Randolph-Macon College in 1859 but left school to enlist in 1861. He mustered as Private in the Bedford Light Artillery on 16 July 1861 in Jamestown, VA and reenlisted on 15 January 1862.

He was wounded in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862, his left hand "torn off" by a shell.

He was hospitalized in Petersburg and Richmond, VA to at least April 1863. By January 1864 he was on permanent detail to the CSA Quartermaster Department in Petersburg, and was on duty to at least the end of February 1865.

He attended the University of Virginia for a year and a half, then, like his father, was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church and licensed to preach in 1868. He served in various "circuits" in Virginia and North Carolina. He was Chaplain General of the United Confederate Veterans at his death at age 92 in 1935.

Service and other details from Marilyn Brewer Koleszar's Ashland, Bedford, and Taylor Virginia Light Artillery (roster, 1994) via the Historical Data Systems database. Personal details from Lafferty's Sketches and Portraits of the Virginia Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1890), which has a c. 1890 photograph of him. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He was older brother to famous US Army doctor Walter Reed (1851-1902).

His memoir Some of the Experiences of James C. Reed as a Soldier in the Army of the Confederate States (1928?) is in the archives at Randolph-Macon. There are also copies at the University of Virginia [finding aid] and the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond.

11/01/1842; Pasquotank County, NC

01/07/1935; burial in Lakeview Cemetery, Blackstone, VA